The Second Branch's Legacy
by RuanaRulane
Summary: Shortly before the end of Season 2, Sam and Dean follow up on a report of walking dead. But another hunter is already on the case - one who not only knows of the ancient evil behind the incident, but also has some less-than-welcome advice for Dean.
1. Chapter 1

He almost made it. His door was only a few paces away when he finally doubled over and vomited onto the tarmac of the motel parking lot, leaning on the bonnet of the sleek black car beside him for support. He just barely had the presence of mind to turn away from it. He didn't need a punch-up over getting his lunch onto somebody's pride and joy.

The fit passed and he spat a couple of times, grey hair hanging in his face. It had got hold of his hair, pulled it free of its pony tail... the thought made him retch anew. That thing's fingers on him, its eyes...

A significant throat-clearing mercifully interrupted his mind's near-panicked circlings. Wary, he took a moment to wipe the vomit out of his beard, then straightened up just a little slowly, allowing himself time to assess the throat's owner. Sturdy boots, well-worn jeans, brown leather over a black t-shirt, gold amulet. What really caught his attention was the man's posture. His feet were planted shoulder width apart, hands hanging casually free, ready to move if needed. This man knew how to handle himself in a fight, Manny was sure.

Finally he initiated eye contact, unsurprised to meet a coolly assessing gaze that left him in no doubt he was being sized up just as thoroughly. There was a brief glance down as he reached his full height and the stranger presumably noted that, even given a couple of extra inches by the motel's walkway, he still had to look up to meet Manny's eye. If that fazed him, he hid it well.

"Is it your car? I'm sorry, I meant no harm."

The other man didn't answer right away; he was frowning slightly, his gaze now directed downwards, at the right hand that had recently rested on the car. Then one of the motel's doors opened and another figure emerged. "Dean -."

The new man was taller than the first – barely shorter than Manny himself – and younger, but his gait suggested he was no less a fighter. 'Dean' glanced at him, twitched his head ever so slightly before turning back to Manny, and the younger man's face took on a similar frown as he too eyed the hand that definitely hadn't been on the car at any point when he'd been there to see it.

Manny brought his arm up to see what was going on. Stared. Wondered idly when it would start to hurt and was answered with an ugly throb, then glanced at the bloody smear on the black bonnet. Tried and failed to recall any other time he'd gone so long without noticing he was bleeding.

"Oh," he said finally. Then, "Excuse me, I think I need to sit down."

"Come inside. You should let me put something on that." The younger man gestured towards the room he'd come out of, then exchanged glances with Dean, who looked none too pleased but simply muttered, "If he yaks again, I ain't cleaning it up."

Manny hesitated. There were so many complications, but at the end of the day refusing aid would probably raise the most suspicion. Resignedly he readied his falsehoods as he walked past the two men and into a room that, though clean, was as shabby as his own, with two unopened overnight bags lying around; but he barely noted the faded, clashing decor as he sank into the nearest chair. Lying on the table beside him were a laptop bag and a two-day-old newspaper with an article circled. He didn't need to read it; he had his own copy.

Hunters, then. Damn. Under different circumstances he'd have walked away – far away – and let them handle it.

The younger man closed the door and started digging in one of the bags. Dean was still outside – making a certain bloodstain disappear, Manny was willing to bet.

"I'm Sam, by the way. Sam Winchester."

"Manny MacLear."

Sam came up with a bulging first-aid kit, then pushed aside the table's contents and meticulously arranged swabs, disinfectant and bandages before sitting down and taking Manny's proffered arm. The green checked sleeve was ripped and soaked through with blood, the cuff button gone and the bite mark still oozing slightly. Sam attended to it with practised ease, not commenting either on the thin, faded scar running most of the length of the forearm, or on the slight skew in the third and fourth fingers which spoke of a badly-healed break.

"It's a nasty bite," he said. "What happened?"

"Let's not beat about the bush, shall we?" Manny nodded at the newspaper.

Sam glanced at him shrewdly, a hint of amusement flitting across his face. "You came here looking for it?"

"Yes, I always keep an eye out for reports of dead men walking. It's a MacLear thing."

"Family business, huh?"

"Not that there's much family to speak of these days. You're after it as well, then?"

The answer was forestalled by Dean's reappearance. "Nice bike. Shouldn't leave your keys in the ignition," he said.

Manny's free hand snapped out instinctively to intercept the tossed keyring. "Thank you."

"Dean, this is Manny. Manny, my brother Dean. We were just talking about that article."

Dean dumped himself onto the nearest bed. "About that angler who reckons somebody tried to eat him?"

"And even though he's sporting some lovely bite marks, everybody thinks he's nuts." Sam briskly tied off the gauze and started packing away.

"But certain folks suspect something different," said Manny. "May I wash my hands?"

"Sure."

He rose and eased his bulk into a bathroom which was surely cramped even to the average-sized human. Taking his time over scrubbing away the blood and dirt, he considered tactics. It would be tough to run these two off now they knew there was a case here – and he'd hardly enhanced his credibility with the vomiting-in-terror introduction. Did he want them gone, anyway? It might turn out he could use the help. But he'd have to be careful. On the rare occasions when he'd encountered hunters, they didn't react well if they realised his true nature.

The thought of not telling them what he knew drifted across his mind only to be sternly rejected. They ought to be informed before they got into it. If they put two and two together now he'd been stupid enough to use his real name... well, maybe they'd be reasonable.

As he went to turn the tap off, he found himself fumbling. His hands were shaking. He glared at them, trying to summon up a few last reserves to make it stop. The shaking subsided but there was still a faint tremor. He sighed and pulled off his bloodied shirt to use it as a towel. The Mad Sunday t-shirt beneath was thankfully little the worse for wear – just a few bits of honest dirt here and there.

He took a breath and extricated himself from the bathroom. "Gentlemen. Might I suggest we repair to that steak house next door? I think I know what we're up against."

The brothers swiftly exchanged glances at the word _we_; but if they cared to debate the matter, they said nothing just yet.


	2. Chapter 2

He tossed the menu aside after a cursory glance and then pressed his hands between his thighs. Dean gave him a quizzical look. "Weren't you all about eating a minute ago?"

"I am. Just feeling decisive." When the barely-interested waitress appeared, he ordered the biggest steak they had, cooked rare. Dean followed suit with a grin, while Sam went for a salad.

Dean checked her out as she walked away, but apparently didn't find the view terribly interesting, for he turned straight back to Manny. "So, you reckon you know what's going on out there?"

He took a breath. It was decades since he'd last rehearsed the tale – what had that woman's name been? Something Walton. He needed to keep his feelings out of it. If he could.

"Are you familiar with the second branch of the Mabinogion?"

Dean looked blank, but Sam's eyes widened at once. "The Cauldron of Rebirth?"

"Just a piece of it, I think. I... hope. You know Evnissyen shattered it."

"Yeah, yeah," broke in Dean irritably, "history geeks know all about the Mayberry tree and the – stuff."

"It's more myth than history, Dean. Would you like to get him caught up, Mister MacLear?"

Manny met Sam's gaze in the silence that fell as the waitress brought them all their beers. There was plenty going on in that young head. He turned to Dean.

"It's an old story. No-one can say how old, but Stonehenge wasn't yet stone when it happened."

"That's over four and a half thousand years ago," Sam translated. Dean looked ostentatiously unimpressed.

Manny nodded. "It began when the giant Llasar Llaes Gyfnewid stole the cauldron that Arawn used to bathe the souls of the dead before they were reborn, to make them forget their old lives. It was a sacred thing, part of the cycle of life, but it didn't belong in the world of the living. The theft twisted it, corrupted it... when it came into my family's possession -"

Dean choked on a mouthful of beer. "_Your_ family's?"

"Yes. Mac Lir is an old, old name. I've spent most of my life seeking the pieces of the Cauldron."

"To fix it?"

"On the contrary. As I was saying, the children of Lir believed it should never be used. But then Matholuch, the king of Ireland, courted the daughter, Branwen, and her brother Evnissyen got angry and mutilated the Irish folks' horses. Matholuch demanded the Cauldron of Rebirth as compensation and – well, they knew they shouldn't but..." Manny saw Dean starting to fidget and abridged the tale further. "Mistakes were made – there was malice enough to go around, not to mention weakness and stupidity. Suffice it to say that Matholuch ended up with the sons of Lir on his doorstep with an army he couldn't beat. Neither side could back down, so he used the Cauldron."

"So what'd it do?"

Manny swallowed. "Dunk a living man in it – maybe a corpse too, I don't know – and what comes out..." He paused and took a drink, the bottle rattling against his teeth. The long-buried memories hissed and muttered, all hateful grins and glittering, merciless eyes. "The things that come back out _never stop_. We cut – you can cut them to pieces and come nightfall they just crawl back to the Cauldron and get fixed. Try to burn them and... and..."

The arrival of the food mercifully interrupted him. He stared at the slab of beef, willing himself not to remember the screams.

"Are you all right?" Sam asked.

"Yes. Yes, I'll be fine." He grabbed his cutlery, hoping they didn't notice his unsteadiness. "I'm just rattled over finally meeting one."

"You're very sure the Cauldron's behind this."

Manny took a bite of steak, savouring the taste, the texture and most of all the tiny rush of power. His hands finally steadied, and beneath the bandage he felt the slight itch of accelerated healing. He fingered it with a rueful smile. "You, ah, have to get quite close to be certain. There's a gleam behind the eyes, the Cauldron inside them. Nothing quite like it." He grabbed the ketchup, wondering which of them would ask the inevitable question.

It was Dean; Sam was apparently contemplating a stick of celery, his face a smooth mask. "So how'd you know what it looks like?"

"Magic. Illusion. I'll show you later if you want."

They glanced at each other, inscrutable.

Manny forged on. "There's something else. The creature that bit me didn't fit the angler's description. It was a woman. Been out there a while to judge from the state of her clothes."

Dean snorted, cramming a piece of steak onto his already chip-laden fork. "A zombie horde. Wonderful."

"Give me the details and I'll check for missing persons," said Sam.

"Redhead, twenties, hiking gear. Snub nose. Bobbed hair. I didn't get many details, I'm afraid." He turned back to Dean. "At least they're not infectious."

"Yeah, the guy who got chewed on seems fine, and it's four days on."

"It was the same in Ireland, it's said. They fought those things for days and the survivors were all right." He took another bite of the juicy steak.

"Is it true there were only seven?" Sam asked.

Manny twitched an eyebrow and took his time chewing. He knew what the young man was poking at and wished he dared simply tell the truth. Finally he swallowed and answered, "I believe it is. But I don't think Ireland fared quite as badly the tale says."

"Okay, so that's the whole Cauldron," said Sam. "What does just a piece do?"

"To be honest, until today I wasn't certain it would do anything."

"Are you sure we're not dealing with the whole thing?"

"I think it would have been a bit more noticeable. Matholuch was just a cornered rat with an atom bomb, but anyone who went to the trouble of assembling the pieces now... presumably they'd have a plan for it. Something more than a few stray monsters in the woods."

Sam considered for a moment. "What happened to the pieces back then?"

"Lir entrusted each quarter to someone to hide it. I don't know who. Four thousand years was enough for the family to rule out the British Isles, then Europe, Africa and most of Asia, so here I am in the New World."

"Lir's not talking?"

Manny eyed him, detected no hint of sarcasm and quietly filed away a mental note. "No."

There was a lull in the conversation as they finished their food. Manny really didn't feel in the mood for pretending to need anything except meat, but forced himself to clean his plate anyway, mindful of Sam's sharp eyes.

"So," said Dean finally, "you want to show us this glow?"

Manny finished his beer.


	3. Chapter 3

In Manny's room, the Winchesters seated by the table, he extracted the silver bowl from his pack. The bathroom tap juddered and spat. He pushed aside the newspaper and a battered H.P. Lovecraft paperback to make way for the bowl on the table, then stood over it waiting for the water to still. Peripherally he was aware of the brothers exchanging glances again.

"So... is this it? All you need?" asked Dean.

Manny eyed him sidelong. "You were expecting chalk sigils, maybe? Candles? Blood of virgins?"

"Well, yeah. And maybe some weird herbs and chanting in Latin."

"This spell predates Latin, and I'm fresh out of the other stuff. Magic isn't all that complicated if you really know what you're doing."

Dean shrugged and glanced at Sam again. The younger man's face was carefully blank. Manny was sure he'd guessed at the whole truth.

A worry for later. He bent over the bowl and concentrated on the terror that had pursued him across millennia as cities, empires and languages came and went. The glow of sunset on the battlefield. The slow, hideous stirring of the corpses as they started to haul their broken frames towards the looming black shape of Matholuch's stronghold – towards the blasphemy silhouetted against that red sky, the Cauldron of Rebirth with its poisonous green light. A light that should never have been in the world. A light that had frozen him in its glare hours before, broken him and sent him fleeing.

With a convulsive jerk he knocked the bowl aside, turned his back on the brothers and took a few deep breaths. "Seen enough?" he said finally.

"I guess," said Dean. "Uh, look, maybe you should -"

"No." He faced them again, arms folded.

"I just -"

"You were just going to suggest I sit back and let you handle it, and the answer is no. I know how it looks, and I can't promise I won't freak out again, and if you're worried I'll put you in danger you should go and hunt something else. Because this is my purpose. I can't hunt anything else. I'm going back out there in the morning." He grinned. "You want to try stopping me... shrimp?"

Dean snorted and jerked a thumb at Sam. "Watch it or I'll set my sasquatch on you. But really, why've you gotta do this? Because some ancestors of yours screwed up thousands of years ago?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, and I don't care to discuss it. Goodnight, gentlemen."

Sam stood at once. Dean opened his mouth again, but there was another exchange of glances and he said simply, "Kay. See you tomorrow."

Once the door had closed behind them, Manny absent-mindedly retrieved the bowl and absorbed the spilled water with a touch. Sam was keeping his voice down – a human wouldn't have heard it from inside.

"Come on, Dean, let's hit that bar down the road. I want a nightcap."

There was a moment's silence, which Manny guessed contained another of those meaningful looks, before he heard Dean's assent. As the Impala's doors snapped shut he was opening the window; as it turned out of the parking lot his clothes dropped to the floor and a peregrine falcon raced through the night behind it.

Soon he was perched on the bar's roof. It was a small matter to pick out the right conversation from the buzz of voices beneath.

"...not telling us everything." That was Sam.

"Who ever tells us everything?"

"Fair point. But I think he was stepping around something pretty major."

"So spill."

"Yeah, well, it's just a guess, and I'm going to need you to listen some more mythology. If you hadn't started acting like it was five minutes till school got out, I might've figured out a bit more from what he didn't tell us."

"Bitch, bitch, bitch."

"So in the Second Branch there were three children of Lir, two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Bran, and the daughter Branwen, died in the war he talked about. But the younger brother, the one who survived – his name was Manawyddan. Manawyddan ap Llyr." Manny couldn't help but be impressed at the accuracy of Sam's pronunciation.

Dean made an impatient noise. "Of course he's not just named after great-granddaddy. That ain't how our lives work."

"It gets better. A similar name comes up in Irish myth – Manannan mac Lir, god of the sea."

"A god? Aw hell."

"That's my guess. Did you notice he slipped and said 'we' when he talked about trying to kill the things the Cauldron makes? Funny thing is, even if I'm right, everything he said could've been technically true."

"Huh. Big consolation when we wind up on the buffet."

Manny shuffled his wings. These boys had met gods before, all right.

"It's not the only explanation. Dad ran into humans who'd managed to extend their lives."

"Yeah, and there was always bad mojo all over it."

"Or he might really be what he wants us to think he is – just a distant descendant."

"You believe that?"

"Nope."

There was a pause. Manny watched the scudding clouds overhead, wondering which way the Winchesters would jump.

Then Dean's voice again. "We can't just bail. Whatever's really going on, it has to be major if it freaks out a god."

"Uh-huh."

"I'll get onto Bobby. There's gotta be some way to kill him."

"Probably, but do we want to do that?"

"I know, we'd better let him take us to this cauldron first."

"Uh, no, I mean do we want to kill him at all?"

"Come on, Sammy, every god I've ever heard of went for human sacrifice."

"Well, obviously, Dean. Hunters follow trails of – of missing persons and dead bodies! Who knows how many gods are flying under the radar just by staying off the long pig?"

Pause. "Okay, I see what you mean. If we could meet vegetarian vampires... but I'm still calling Bobby. And if our friend's lying to us about anything else..."

"Fine." Sam sighed. "Let's get back. I'm going to check out this woman hiker. And I'll see what I can dig up about killing him, just in case."

"Fine."

Two empty-sounding beer bottles thumped onto a table and moments later the brothers emerged. As he winged his way back to the motel, Manny considered his options. They probably wouldn't manage to dig up the secret of disposing of him permanently – not in a single night, anyway – but cremation could put him out of action for a while, and he really didn't want that when he'd found his first solid lead in millennia. Then again – he'd found his first solid lead in millennia.

Waste of time, really. Debate was moot when two facts were plain. One, Manny wasn't leaving. Two, neither were the Winchesters.


	4. Chapter 4

Manny got off his motorbike as the Impala pulled up behind him, alongside the lonely forest road. He checked that his aging Desert Eagle was safely in its holster, then started buckling his sword-belt as he walked to the rear of the car where the brothers were selecting from an impressive arsenal.

"I suggest you go for stopping power," he said. "I doubt these things'll even notice if a bullet goes through them."

Dean looked up briefly, not quite succeeding in the attempt to hide his suspicion. He'd barely spoken since Manny had heard the pair getting up and gone to tap on their door.

It was Sam, who was doing a better job of pretending to think Manny was normal, who spoke. "Anything else?"

"Blades. Dismemberment is the only way to stop them."

"And that's only temporary, right?"

"Oh, the pieces will still be trying to kill you. The real trick is making sure they don't find their way back to the Cauldron to get put together again."

"What were you going to tell us about burning them?"

For a few long moments the only sound was the rhythmic whisper of Dean's machete against a whetstone.

Manny swallowed hard. "They try to get away... actually, it – it might be worth a shot if there are only a few."

"And if there are more than a few?"

"Then they'll run right over anyone who tries to stop them. It's like a shoal of piranhas. Strips men to the bone in moments."

That one actually made Sam's eyes widen a little. He accepted the whetstone Dean offered him and started sharpening a big hunting knife.

Manny continued, "For all anyone knows, even ashes might be able to get back to the Cauldron in the end. The guys back then didn't really have time for empirical testing."

"Swell," muttered Dean.

"So, Manny – why don't you take us to where you got bitten and we'll see if I can pick up a trail?"

"Sounds fine to me."

The day was overcast and breezy. As Manny led the way through the whispering trees, he felt watching eyes all around; there was a time when he'd have been able to see them. He skirted a fallen tree – yes, he'd been by here. A possum's bright eyes peeked at them and then swiftly vanished into the darkness beneath. He wriggled his shoulders, trying to dissipate the tension crawling up his spine. Closer... they'd be there soon and he was finding it harder and harder not to jump at the least little noise, even the ones he knew perfectly well were a rabbit or a bird. Oh, and there was a smear of blood on a tree-trunk – his blood.

Finally he laid a hand on a moss-covered boulder, smooth and rounded and why did he have to go thinking of a skull? "This is it." He pointed to a snapped sapling, recently-disturbed leaves and a deep groove in the soil where he'd slipped in his scramble to get away.

"Okay," said Sam. "Let's fan out and see what we can find."

It was Dean who pointed out the small bootprint in a patch of mud, then a broken twig with a few olive threads hanging from it.

"It matches her waistcoat – uh, vest," said Manny. "Did you find out anything about her, by the way?"

"I think her name's Donna Steiner. Vanished from a hiking trip six months ago." Sam paused. "You'd have told us if you knew any way to... save her?"

"The Cauldron's a thing of death. It empties bodies out before it fills them up again. This isn't like demonic possession."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Oh yeah, and we should just take your word for it? She could be still in there!"

"She's not." Manny walked around him and strode through the trees.

Behind him, a heated response was quietly interrupted by Sam, who caught up with ease and asked, "How do you know?"

He didn't slow down. "We checked. I was the best druid around and Bran had more of our father in him than Branwen and me put together. If there was anything human in there, I'd have sensed it yesterday if not before. Even de-powered gods can tell these things. And by the way, if you want to stop us overhearing you, the bar down the road isn't far enough."

He walked on without looking around, and all he knew of the brothers' reaction was the significant click of a cocked pistol – Dean's.

"Bobby didn't know a way to kill me, then. Actually, I'm not certain low earth orbit is far enough. I must check on that sometime. Philosophical question, meaning no disrespect – how much steak would you eat if you knew how the cow felt?"

There was a moment's pause, presumably so that the human could sort through the leaps from one subject to another. "So we're cattle, huh?"

Manny sighed, stopped and turned to look Dean in the eye, trying to ignore the gun. "Not to me, that's the point. Most gods always were gods. To them, you're a different species. To many, yes, you're cattle. But I started out a mortal man. I thought I'd live out my span and die like the rest of my family – except Lir, of course. I've spent over four thousand years hanging onto that humanity."

Dean's jaw was set, his gaze hard. It was Sam who spoke. "You don't eat human flesh?"

"Only when it's been freely donated by its owner. Willing sacrifices have been thin on the ground these past couple of thousand years, hence my current condition." Manny edged backwards and to his left, gaze still locked with Dean's.

"Ohhh," Dean drawled. "Well, that obviously makes all the difference!"

"You're damned right it does, Mister Twenty-First Century American! I'll wager you've never been hungry more than a few hours together in your life. You've no idea how it feels, knowing one disastrous harvest or, or ill-timed war – or a hungry monster – could end you and everyone you ever cared about. So yes, people would give their lives to make sure I could protect their communities, and who the hell are you to say they were wrong? To tell me, what, I should have thrown it back in their faces and told them they were on their own because I was too squeamish to do what they were asking me – on bended knee – to do?"

"Squeamish? How about -" Dean started forward and vanished with a yelp. Sam froze for a microsecond before yelling his brother's name and dashing over to the spot.

"Huh," said Manny, "I didn't think it was that deep."

"Didn't think – there are old mines all over this place! Dean!"

A muffled voice came from below. "I'm okay. Hang on." Scrabbling. "Nah, I ain't getting back up there. Go get a rope an' I'll check where this tunnel goes."

"I've got a better idea," said Manny.

From the hole came a very specific and colourful suggestion as to what he could do with his idea, followed by an equally colourful warning about the consequences if he harmed Sam.

Manny shrugged it off. "Really, it'll only take a minute."

Sam gave him a dirty look. His own weapon was drawn, but not pointed at Manny - yet. "You just dropped my brother down a hole."

"Bullets hurt. Are you going to let me help?"

Instincts warred behind the young man's eyes. "Convince me."

"You wouldn't have figured it out if I hadn't at least been honest about my name. If you've read the Mabinogion you know what kind of man I was. That's still me. I don't want stray dead things hurting innocent people, and I definitely don't want that damned cauldron back in the world. And I don't eat humans. We're on the same side – at least for now."

"What exactly is this idea?"

"Have you lost your frigging mind, Sammy?"

"Shut up, Dean."

"There's a reason I came this way," Manny said hurriedly. "Over there."

Sam looked. "That's a yew, isn't it? Looks old."

"An English yew, to be exact. Almost as old as I am, I'll wager, and its roots go deep. If there's another way out, it'll know – and it'll know if the cauldron's here, too."

"And it'll... tell you?"

"Oh, trees are loquacious things. You just need to know how to listen." Manny approached the ancient tree slowly, respectfully and laid his fingertips on the bark. For several moments there was nothing – with his senses open, it was hard to tune out Sam's agitation.

Then – there. Earth and water and the whisper of wind. Leaf and seed and sap and time. Was his forehead pressed against bark, or was there flesh touching his trunk? Deep, deep roots and deeper memories. Twigs, branches, new trunks, four thousand flowerings and more. Creeping things, climbing things and flying things – and the creatures that walked upright. There had been plenty of those, above the ground and below. Finally he found it, the poison beneath it all, the slow, slow heartbeat of something that should never have been in the world. His stomach lurched and he pulled away sharply.

"Got it," he muttered, then leaned on his knees, breathing hard, pulling back into himself, his awareness of Sam's contained impatience fading.

He was out of practice. It shouldn't take him this long to recover.

Finally, he was back. Sam's heartbeat was quick, his pupils dilated, but outwardly he was still and calm, his gun back in its holster.

"You were right. It's an old mine. The deeper parts have been flooded since they built the dam downstream, but the entrance is dry. This way."

Sam relayed the important details to Dean, ignoring his protests, and they set off. It was only a few minutes before they emerged from the trees within sight of a reservoir. Manny led the way through the bushes to a spot he'd learned of from the yew. He muttered a curse as his shin smacked into a low branch.

"This used to be a tin mine, I think," Sam informed him, scrubbing moss from a barely-visible wooden lintel. "Yes, here – Horse Feathers Mine. I was reading about it last night. It was sealed up in eighteen-sixty-eight, after a cave-in. Killed over thirty men."

"They abandoned a profitable mine over one accident? You think that's the whole story?"

"I'm kind of doubting it." Stones tumbled as Sam excavated the mine's entrance.

Manny stopped rubbing his shin and went to help. "And when you consider that they went to the trouble of bricking the place up..."

"Yeah. Nice big hole there, though." Sam examined the bright red brick dust on his fingers.

"My godlike tracking senses tell me that's a recent break."

"No, really? Those rocks weren't there accidentally, were they?"

"Probably not. Remember we're not up against zombies here. These things are smart enough to hide if they need to. Let me go first. I can survive something ripping my head off."

"Uh, yeah, I think so. You could've killed my brother. I'm not real inclined to turn my back on you."

Manny grinned. "One problem at a time, huh? Practical. Good."

Sam's lips tightened disgustedly; he disdained to reply.

Manny stepped over the remains of the wall and went a few paces before stopping to look, listen, and use the other sense he couldn't truly have described in any human language. Upon seeing a torch-beam shine past, he whirled and snapped, "Switch that thing off!"

The young man did so immediately, and a heartbeat later looked astonished at himself. Manny stifled a grin and turned away again. Being a prince was just like riding a bike.

"You do remember that humans can't see in the dark, right?"

"The light'll alert them. I'll tell you when you need it."

"I'm supposed to just trust you?"

"Look, apart from the time I had a gun pointed at me, have I ever led either of you astray?"

Again the disgusted lip-tightening. "All those careful half-truths you told us yesterday?"

"Didn't you have to talk your brother out of killing me on principle? You hunters have to lie all the time, and so do I. I hate it, for the record."

"Let's just get on with finding him."

"Mind your head."

Off in the deeps, Manny could hear... more noise than Dean could have made. There was shuffling and thumping, the rattle of dislodged pebbles.

"Is that them?" Sam whispered.

"Either that or some sodding big moles. Grab on to me, we can move quicker that way."

After a moment the other man's hand took hold of his elbow, and he quickened his pace a little. It felt good to have human company – even if it didn't like him very much – and yet to be himself, able to be honest. Too bad it was accompanied with a slight nervousness about what they might yet do to him.

He muttered a warning to Sam and bent further as the ceiling lowered – or, to be more accurate, as the floor rose slightly. After a few minutes he stopped, hearing Dean calling for his brother. There was suppressed desperation in the voice, and Manannan found himself wanting, very badly, to keep quiet, his unease abruptly blossoming into terror. Let them be distracted tearing the man to pieces, while he and Sam kept the element of surprise.

His hesitation lasted perhaps long enough for Sam's heart to beat twice, and he was furious with himself. "Switch on. Run. He's in trouble."

Sam shot past him faster than he'd have believed possible in the cramped tunnel, while he stood like a stump, willing his feet to start moving again. The light had already vanished around a corner before he managed it. He wanted, very badly, to throw up again. There was a gunshot. Then another.

With a final push he uprooted himself and stumbled around the corner, catching up to Sam almost at once. The young man was standing at the end of the tunnel where it fell away into a natural cavern, tumbled boulders below and stalactites above. His torch-beam picked out Dean on the other side, perched on a boulder and hanging on for dear life with one hand whilst blowing away any Cauldron-spawn that managed to climb up near him. Manannan was relieved to see he'd been willing to take advice about stopping power – not that it would help in the long run. Surveying the writhing mass below it was clear the boy couldn't possibly have enough bullets.

Sam's eyes were wide. "So many," he whispered.

"Four and a half thousand years' worth," Manny answered. "Any bright ideas?"

"Sammy!" Dean pounded a foot into the face of a too-near spawn, knocking it into the ones below it.

Sam swung his torch around, picking out geological formations. "There's gotta be some way across."

"There does? Why?"

A long arm shot out and grabbed his lapel, getting some skin along with it. "Because my brother's not dying down here, that's why! You're a god – there's got to be something you can do!"

"A powerless god."

"Because you won't accept unwilling human sacrifice, right?" Sam let go of Manny and pulled out his knife. His jaw was set. "How much do you need?"

"W-what?"

"Do I have to die? Would an arm be enough?"

"Uh – no, no, you don't need to cut anything off. Just some of your blood."

There was a flash of... something in Sam's eyes at the last word; but whatever it was, he swiftly hid it, set the torch down and yanked at his sleeve.

Manny glanced over at Dean, who was hacking off a hand – claw – which had achieved an iron grip on his boot, and decided not to mention that sacrifices tended to work better if done with awe and reverence. At least the proper selflessness was there. He took Sam's hand and gently guided the tip of the knife to an artery. "Say a few words about dedicating your sacrifice to me. Then push. I'll patch you up when I've got enough."

Sam frowned and with bad grace muttered something that sounded about right – not that it mattered in the end. The form helped, but intention was sufficient.

He hated the leap of anticipation in his chest as the knife pierced skin. The gush of blood seared across his vision, red in a world of greys, so vivid that suddenly all the centuries-suppressed longings struck him like a kick in the head and then there was the taste of it in his mouth, heady lusciousness that seared its way down his throat and he knew, he knew there was something very wrong with this young man, but he barely noticed the avalanche of images in his head, just the incredible half-forgotten rush of human self-sacrifice filling him up after so many long years.

It seemed like some time before he realised he'd taken more than enough, but it couldn't be, he realised as with an effort he wrenched his lips from the fount and sealed it up with a thought; Sam was steady on his feet, his heart still thumping strongly and his veins mostly full. The world was a cacophony, his every sense gushing information like a broken tap, and it seemed incredible that there had been a time when he'd been used to this. Across the cavern, Dean's frantic heartbeat seemed barely fainter, and the rock and earth around them was full of things that squirmed and scuttled and breathed. The worst of all was the sixth sense, the one he could never have put into human words. He hadn't been a god the last time he'd faced them, hadn't been equipped to truly perceive the ghastly void within the creatures. Nature abhorred a vacuum.

"And I'm part of nature," he muttered, resting a hand against the rough-hewn stone of the tunnel. Dean bellowed as one of the monsters finally sank its teeth into his thigh, but it didn't matter – Manny knew exactly how he'd fix it. All of it.

He was a sea god, and the reservoir was fresh water; but that wouldn't stop him. At his call, it answered – swiftly, readily, joyously it poured uphill, over the crumbling brickwork and into the tunnel. Gods, what a rush!

"Relax," he muttered as Sam's eyes widened. "I'm in charge here." True to his word, he nudged the onrushing wall of water so that not a drop got onto the young man. He took no such action for himself; there was no need. The water knew who its friend was. It burst into the ancient cavern and swiftly became a vortex, seizing the defiled corpses and smashing them into the walls, the boulders, each other, smashing them to pieces. A sneaky little wave plucked away Dean's attackers but left the man himself only slightly damp. Manny was pleased to see that he was too smart to look a gift horse in the mouth, simply scrambling higher.

Once satisfied that the monsters were sufficiently pulverised, Manny encouraged the water to drain away through whatever holes and cracks he could find, and pulled some back the way it had come; it took with it all but the biggest pieces of Cauldron-spawn. Sam looked grudgingly impressed. Dean was poking in confusion at the spot on his thigh where there was no longer a bite mark.

"I can fix your jeans too, if you like," Manny called.

Dean's gaze flicked up to him, to Sam, then back. "No thanks."

"Suit yourself." He scrambled down and made his way over the boulders to the far end of the cavern, then laid his hand on a block of stone that had the whole sad story engraved in pictures around its sides. "There was a quarter here. Someone's taken it."

"You sure it's nowhere around?" Sam asked.

"I'm sure. In my current state, something that powerful – I'd sense it miles away. The good news is, now that it's gone the bodies it's... transformed should finally stop. Eventually." He sighed. "That must be why any of them bothered to climb out at all – their instinct was to find it. I should have guessed. I'm sorry."

"We needed to be sure. At least they won't hurt anybody else."

"Look at this," said Dean, indicating a slowly-moving shape at his feet. "Damn thing's trying to get somewhere."

Manny frowned at the disembodied forearm. The hand was opening, closing, dragging itself by fractions of an inch across the stony ground. There was definite purpose there and, after a moment's contemplation, he snatched the thing up, broke off the hand and wrapped it in his handkerchief, discarding the rest.

"What the hell?"

"It's trying to get back to the fragment. If I can do some triangulation before it dies properly, I'll narrow it down a lot."

"Great. How'd you get all mojo'd up again, anyhow?"

Manny met Dean's challenging gaze and said, "With your brother's kind co-operation. Fight with him, if you must."

Sam glanced up from inspecting the carvings. "Come on, Dean, I've gone through tougher donations at blood drives. And it did save your ass."

The older brother mumbled something about bloodsuckers but seemed willing to concede the point.

"Then I think we're done here," said Manny. "I'll do some divinations, see whether I can't get some kind of read on who took the thing. And now I'm powered up again it'll be easy to track down that hiker and any others who got out... dangerously intact."

"Not if we find 'em first," said Dean.

"As you wish. Thank you, anyway. I really couldn't have got this far without you."


	5. Epilogue

Lying on a dirty old raincoat amidst the trash, the alley cat thankfully appeared to escape Sam's gaze. Had he paid it any mind, he might have noticed that it had no tail – silly, really, Manny could just have easily have changed himself into a less conspicuous breed, but old habits died hard. He watched with half-lidded eyes as the Impala pulled away, took another swift check around – with all his senses – then distorted, swelled and suddenly was a big grey-haired man with scars aplenty. He pulled on the raincoat and went to rap on the door from which Sam had emerged.

Dean was distinctly underwhelmed. "Okay, that's one escort service I'm never calling again."

"Five minutes. Please. Then I go away and stop bothering you."

"Promise?"

"If you wish."

He shrugged and stepped aside.

This particular cheap motel room had nowhere to sit but the beds. Manny found himself fiddling with his collar, putting off speaking; even after patiently tracking the pair for days, he hadn't come up with an opening that seemed right.

"Clock's ticking," said Dean.

"How right you are. I sensed it waiting for you when I drank your brother's blood. The crossroads. The choice."

The young man's fist clenched against his thigh. "If you're gonna tell me to kill him -."

"No," he said quickly. "That's not it. I see I'm not the first to have this conversation with you, but... no, I don't think you need to kill him."

The fist relaxed, but Dean's eyes were still as hard as stone.

"Please understand, what I sensed... it's big. Wheels within wheels, forces so huge I can barely begin to comprehend them... I'm trying to describe Mount Rushmore from a foot away. So I'll just tell you what Lincoln's left eye looks like to me, and hope you've got enough of the other pieces to figure it out before it's too late. You have a decision to make, I think – one which will affect the fates of many, many people. The world, maybe."

"Yeah, right. The world in my hands."

Manny smiled faintly. "I've seen it in stranger hands... in worse. You have good instincts, a strong heart. I doubt you'll blow it any worse than I did. That's what I'm here to tell you. I don't know exactly how it fits, but I have a feeling it's what you need to hear. I've learned to trust my feelings.

"You see, I had a chance to stop it. The war. The Cauldron. Before it all started. My brother knew that marrying Branwen to Matholuch was the wrong decision. But she was in love with him – and Bran wanted his own son to inherit the throne. For that, he needed our sister out of the way... I won't get into the rules of succession back then, I'm sure Sam can explain if you're actually interested, but the point is this. All he needed was a push. A word from me and he'd have acted like a king, made the right decision. But I let the moment pass.

"Because I wanted my brother and sister to be happy. So I was silent when I should have spoken, and events proceeded as they did. Blood. Horror. Thousands dead. Bran and Branwen two of them. Nearly everyone I'd ever cared about. The greatest mistake I ever made, and I made it for the best of reasons. I made it out of love."

He felt silent and, with an effort, prevented his hands from going back to his collar. It was a few moments before he could meet Dean's gaze again.

The young man was inscrutable. "You done?"

"I'm done."

"Sam'll be back with the food soon. You'd better go."

"Bannaght ort, Dean."

Outside, he tossed the coat into a convenient dumpster and took wing, headed back to where he had left his bike. He had done all he could; for better or worse, Dean would make his own decision.

And events proceeded as they did.


End file.
